Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1877 — For One’s Health. [ARTICLE]

For One’s Health.

“ Oh, the doctor has ordered it. He says it is absolutely necessary for my health.” , As we meet our friends, these pleasant summer days, and they tell us where they are going this summer, they almost invariably finish off with the remark which opens this article. Doctors, in these days, are shrewd fellows. They have an eye to the main chance; and, as every fashionable woman is out of health, it “ stands their physicians” in hand to make them believe that their condition is dangerous unless carefully attended to. Of course every fashionable woman likes to think that her health demands she should go to the salt water, or to the mountains. It is very pleasant for her to think that she is going, and to tell her dear five hundred friends that she is going, and going for her health. There is a sort of eclat in going .somewhere for vour health. And it is surprising how paterfamilias , no matter how penurious he may be, nor how obstinately he says “Fudge!” and “ Bosh!” when all other little excursions are suggested—it is surprising, we say, how quickiy he wilts and opens his pock-et-book when the doctor’s opinion is quoted to him, and the plea of “ For my health” is presented. It is singular how most people delight to get away from home. Home, which should be the center of all our joys, and the grand nucleus around which should cluster our dearest hopes and our fondest affections. Home, which should be to every woman of a thousand-fold more iinSortance than all the Saratogas, and Long ranches and White Mountains. Year by year our fashionable women, when July sets in, leave their cool, comfortable houses, where blinds and screens shut out the heat, and dust, and smoke—leave their spacious, well-furnished chambers, and their elegantly-appointed tables to travel. And they submit to be stewed and grilled in nine by ten bedrooms; they are stifled in the packing-box state-rooms of first-class steamers; they are bullied by the landlords, cheated by the hackmen, half-poisoned by the bad cooking, and made to suffer from flies, heat, mosquitoes and other insects too numerous to mention, to the tune of four dollars a day, and washing extra. And this is called traveling for pleasure and health! Now', we do not want to be understood as saying anything against travel, when properly conducted, tor we do believe that no system of education so polishes a man as a judicious course of travel, and we have no doubt but that if Diogenes had come forth from his tub and traveled during tlie fashionable season, be would have been much more entertaining company (for the tub)•on his return. But we cannot see how anybody can call summer travel, as it is usually conducted, a pleasure. We have tried it quite extensively, and have failed to discover where the pleasure comes in. And our advice would be—never travel in July and August unless you are a salamander. If a woman can go on season after season traveling for her health, and not collapse under the martyrdom, she must be blessed with a sound constitution, and it is safe for her to calculate on living twenty vears on “ borrowed time.” —Kate Thorn , in N. T. Weekly.